SCHENECTADY — After trying to show solidarity with taxpayers by slashing Mayor Gary McCarthy's budget, the City Council has agreed to restore an assistant police chief's position

The council is expected to vote unanimously Wednesday to put the third assistant chief's $125,000 line back in the budget. The move is a turnaround from Dec. 3, when council President Denise Brucker dismissed council member Marion Porterfield's suggestion to reinstate the position after council members received a letter from Police Chief Mark Chaires saying he had moved money around to accommodate the third assistant chief.

"There will be in January four command staff: a chief, commissioner and two assistant chiefs," Brucker said at that meeting. "If we can't run a city police department with those four individuals ... I take issue with that."

In October, the council cut $868,645 from McCarthy's proposed 2013 budget to lower the tax rate from 4.2 percent to 1.7 percent. That budget cut two assistant chief posts, one of which — likely assistant chief Brian Kilcullen — will move into Chaires' spot once he officially retires next week.

But reinstating the third assistant chief position appears on the council agenda for Wednesday, after McCarthy appealed to City Council last week behind closed doors during an executive session.

Brucker said she's still reluctant about restoring the position, but that McCarthy said "there are just too many duties to put through with two chiefs." She said the council will provide the department with a goal to meet, like reducing the number of outstanding warrants, and will review the assistant chief position again if progress isn't met.

"The council made it really clear to the mayor and to police administration that if we were to reinstate a position we really wanted to make sure there would be measurable goals that went along with that," Brucker said.

She will step down as president at year's end. Likely, Councilwoman Peggy King will take over.

If the assistant police chief position were eliminated, least-senior assistant chief Patrick Leguire would have bumped down to the rank of lieutenant, which would have caused many other officers to bump down as well, Brucker said.

Because Leguire would not have lost his job, the change would have saved only about $40,000 in salary. And McCarthy said the savings might not have been that much because, as a lieutenant, Leguire would have been eligible for overtime. Assistant chiefs Michael Seber and Jack Falvo would have been unaffected.

But unlike previously believed, removing an assistant chief would not have resulted in a patrolman being laid off because there will be four vacancies in the 145-member force at the start of 2013.

McCarthy said a third assistant chief is integral to the new command structure he'll announce once a new chief is hired in January. The mayor acknowledged money had been cut out of the police department budget to reinstate the third chief, but he didn't know what had been eliminated.